The expansion of the gaming industry has created a great demand for new games of chance. Accordingly, as more and more casinos continue to be built competition for retaining current patrons and attracting new patrons increases. One method to retain and attract patrons is to provide patrons with new electronic gaming devices or machines offering players the possibility of winning large progressive type jackpots. Two of the most popular slot machines in the casino industry are Megabucks® and Wheel of Fortune®. The games are popular in large part due to the attractive progressive jackpots associate therewith. For example, the Megabucks® jackpot is funded at $8,000,000 and grows until won. The jackpot has exceeded $32,000,000. The jackpots associated with the Wheel of Fortune® games are more modest (e.g., $750,000 to $4,000,000) but still entice large numbers of players.
Both Megabucks® and Wheel of Fortune® generate large jackpots by linking a plurality of slot machines over multiple gaming properties such that dedicated portions of each wager or each wager are applied to the ever-growing jackpot amount. For example, there are over 700 Megabucks® machines linked throughout the state of Nevada. Another popular game facilitated by a gaming device is video poker. While video poker has an attractive pay table, including an 800 to 1 (or more) payout for hitting a Royal Flush, video poker does not facilitate a progressive jackpot funded over multiple properties. Video poker machines are linked in a local area, usually a bank of machines, to generate slightly larger progressive payouts. However, the jackpots are significantly smaller in comparison to those disclosed above.
Therefore, there continues to be a need for a method of generating a progressive jackpot related to the underlying game of video poker.